Mann-made global warming

Tuesday

Jan 28, 2014 at 12:01 AMJan 28, 2014 at 1:30 AM

By J.D. Mullane

My column criticizing renowned global warming enthusiast Michael Mann drew the attention of Mann himself, who tweeted to his many followers on Friday: “Denialist rants like this buckscountycouriertimes.com/news/columnist … have no place in our discourse. #Dishonest#Dishonorable. Shame on @jdmullane@CourierTimes.”

Then he blocked me from following him on Twitter, the grump.

Mann is a professor of meteorology at Penn State, and is a vociferous defender of a theory — which some take as indisputable fact — that the earth is warming, humans are causing it, and global catastrophe looms.

Mann and a couple of other scientists came up with this theory in the 1990s, after examining data gleaned from tree rings and other proxies for world temperatures. The result was the “hockey stick” graph, showing global temps spiking in the 20th century. The hockey stick graph was made famous by former Vice President Al Gore in “An Inconvenient Truth.”

But my column last week wasn’t about the hockey stick graph or tree ring gazing. It was mostly about Michael Mann calling on fellow scientists to become activists. He wants them to defend the theory by tying extreme weather events to human-caused “climate change,” which is what global warming was rebranded after it became a reliable punch line.

Perhaps the globe is warming. Perhaps it’s cooling. But in this winter of the dreaded polar vortex, to say “your local weather is cooling because the Earth is warming” is gibberish, no matter how many tree rings you’ve run through Windows 95.

Mann speaks as if his data is unassailable. Of course it’s assailable, and it doesn’t matter if a “consensus of scientists” say otherwise. In science, theories are always up for review, debate and, when appropriate, late night jokes.

A reader writes: “I have been a global warming/climate change skeptic from day one, since I could not reconcile claims of human-caused warming with the information that 10,000 to 20,000 years ago, the island of Manhattan was under a mile thick sheet of ice. If the “consensus of scientists” who contend we are in the grips of man-caused, catastrophic worldwide warming, then explain to me how a mile thick sheet of ice can melt in an eye-blink, in geologic time. Oh, and without a single human-caused carbon emission. They can’t, and they rely on the ignorance and gullibility of the broad public to force massive lifestyle changes which mean nothing to global climate change.”

Another reader, with eminent science and engineering credentials, sends these questions about climate change theory and the conclusion that temps are rising:

“We need to understand all things that affect the relationships between the sun and the Earth. First, what is the radiation from the sun as a function of time? Are the various components of the sun’s radiation — infrared, radio, visible light, ultra violet, X-ray, etc., — constant over time? If not, how do they vary and what are the effects of their variances? “Then there are the changes in the earth-sun geometry. The Earth does not follow a perfectly circular path around the sun. What and when are the effects? “The Earth does not revolve on an axis with a constantly maintained relationship to the plane of the Earth’s rotation about the sun. What and when are the effects of these changes? “Is the plane of the Earth’s rotation about the sun constant? If not, what effect does any change have on the earth’s climate? “When these questions are answered, there remains yet another question: How do we know (not believe, estimate, calculate, wish or want) that the measurements and resultant data correctly represent the truth?” Your ball, Professor Mann.

This reader presents a climate change theory that is as, ahem, thought-provoking as tree rings: “I was around in the early 1950s, when General Electric sold a weather-altering generator to the USSR. Since then, it has been reproduced and turned into a weapon aimed at anyone (the Russians) don’t like. These so-called natural disasters? Ha-ha. I can understand the (U.S. government) not wanting to start a panic, but the public has a right to know what is going on.”

I just wish GE would make a front-load washer as reliable as its weather machine. My GE front-loader malfunctioned after a pipe freeze during the first week of the polar vortex, causing thousands in damage. Will I purchase another GE front-loader? Nyet.

J.D. Mullane can be reached at 215-949-5745 or at jmullane@phillyburbs.com. Twitter @jdmullane.

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